Couple wanting second child instead ends up with four more in SC. ‘We were in shock’
A South Carolina mom hoping for a second child was shocked to learn she was expecting four of them.
Ally Hampton was getting an ultrasound with her husband, Justin, when their doctor surprised them with the news that they were having quadruplets, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) said Friday.
“He was just like, ‘I’m going to start from left to right.’ And we were like, ‘What?’” Ally said before the doctor started counting.
By No. 4, the couple joked that they were ready for the count to stop.
“We were in shock,” Ally said, according to MUSC.
The Hamptons said they sought help with getting pregnant after having “fertility struggles” with their first child, a 3-year-old girl. They turned to Coastal Fertility for a treatment called intrauterine insemination, and Ally couldn’t wait to get the results.
“You’re supposed to wait two weeks before doing a pregnancy test,” she said. “But I was not patient and did it three days early. It was positive.”
Across the nation, health officials say about 6% of married 15- to 44-year-old women can’t get pregnant after a year of trying to do so.
The intrauterine insemination process is sometimes used for couples experiencing “unexplained” infertility, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website. Though it doesn’t increase chances of having multiples, drugs that are linked to it can, Healthline previously reported.
In 2019, the U.S. birth rate for triplets or higher multiples was 87.7 per 100,000, according to the CDC.
Dr. Rebecca Wineland of MUSC said being pregnant with four babies poses risks, and the Hamptons were “on edge” at first.
“From the beginning, they told us they were all in their own amniotic sacs,” Justin said in the hospital’s news release. “So they’re not identical. That actually increases the chance for survival. They also had their own placentas, which meant that they were getting their own nutrients.”
When Ally was about 29 weeks pregnant, it was time for the Hamptons to meet their new babies.
“It was just such a surreal moment,” Ally said in the news release. “I think they had 13 nurses waiting to help — they had everybody lined up.”
Three girls and a boy were delivered through cesarean section within two minutes of one another. The children — Ava, Blake, Colby and Colt — were taken to a neonatal intensive care unit, officials said.
Since then, the Hamptons have been trying to keep their older daughter on a regular schedule and are welcoming their newborns home as soon as they are healthy enough, according to a GoFundMe page that says it’s raising money for the family.
“I think we’ve already gotten into that, like, ‘This is our story,’” Justin told MUSC. “I don’t know how we did it before.”
This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 2:39 PM with the headline "Couple wanting second child instead ends up with four more in SC. ‘We were in shock’."
